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Defector lured by 'shockingly beautiful' Western music
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Special to World Tribune.com
EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM
Friday, March 31, 2006
SEOUL — Pianist Kim Cheol-Weong said he decided to defect to South Korea after hearing decadent Western music in a coffee shop in Moscow.
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Kim Cheol-woong, the pianist who defected from North Korea, was a prodigy who was trained in classical music.
Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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It was then, he said, that “I decided to defect to South Korea.”
Kim, who teaches piano here, rebelled against the notion that Western music was “barbaric” while being forced to play pieces that venerated either Kim Il-Sung, the long-time leader of North Korea who died in 1994, or his son, Kim Jong-Il.
Musicians, he said while rehearsing for a concert here, “were only a means and a tool to maintain the regime,” while “jazz is considered barbaric because it has no melody.”
Kim, 31, said he “learned that [Western music] is the most corrupted culture rooted from capitalism” but “the music, which I had had a bad image of, sounded shockingly beautiful to me.”
Said to be the son of a senior North Korean military official, he escaped across the Tumen River to China and wound up playing in a Christian church. At a concert here, he played in a manner that seemed quite gentle in comparison to the strong, tough music of rebellion that some members of the audience had expected.
Kim said that his consuming ambition is to play at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Kim worries, however, about the impact his defection will have on his father’s position — and on the safety of others members of his family. North Korean security officials are notorious for punishing family members of defectors, often sending them all to prison camps.
In the meantime, said Kim, Clayderman “is still my favorite even though I have encountered many other genres.”
Copyright © 2006 East West
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